In JRS LVI (1966) I gave a description of the Aoi Stena which was based on autopsy, and I discussed the campaigns of Rome against Philip V of Macedon in the years 200 to 198 B.C. In this paper I am concerned with the area farther north which Rome acquired in 229 B.C. and with the actions which took place there before 200 B.C. Many scholars have discussed Rome's early activities in Illyris but practically none of them has trodden the ground. My knowledge of most of the area may help me to advance more down-to-earth views of the extent of Rome's sector in Illyris and of Roman and Macedonian policies. I include some new evidence on the position of Dimallum.

The salient feature of Central Albania is the belt of coastal plain which extends from north of Lesh (Lissus) to north of the Gulf of Valona (see fig. 1). The widest and richest part of this plain is in the Myzeqija, which extends southwards from Kavajë. The Myzeqija in particular is integral to the economy of Central Albania, the area which was called Southern Illyris in the third century B.C. The transhumance of sheep has always been practised in this part of the Balkans, and the coastal plain of Albania with months of very heavy rainfall in October and March affords exceptionally fine pasturage for the winter period.

The most fascinating aspect of the language and style of Tacitus is that they may be seen in evolution. If we set aside the Dialogus as a special case because of its subject matter, for which a Ciceronian style was virtually obligatory, we may follow Tacitus' style through a continuous process of development from the two monographs to the Histories and then to its culmination in his most mature work, the Annals—though to use this word ‘culmination’ may be to prejudge the issue. Of course stylistic change and development may be found in the works of many writers, Cicero and Propertius for instance, but in few writers if any is the development so clear to see, yet also so complicated, as in Tacitus.

E. Wölfflin, who began the systematic investigation of Tacitus' language and style, maintained that there is in Tacitus' writings a persistent and continuous movement away from normal, hackneyed and colourless expressions towards novelty, colour and dignity, towards what the Greeks called σενότης—or, as some have chosen to put the matter, Tacitus in diverging more and more from the ‘normal’ became progressively more ‘Tacitean’.

The modern bibliography on the subject of the juridical basis of the persecutions of the Christians in the Roman Empire before 250 is vast, contentious—and in large part worthless. For no-one has yet attempted to gather together in a small compass and to scrutinize without preconceptions all the primary evidence for specific actions or legal enactments of the Senate or of emperors before Decius which directly concerned the Christians, or which were directly rendered necessary by them. Ulpian collected the imperial rescripts relating to the punishment of Christians in the seventh book of his De Officio Proconsulis. This chapter has left no discernible trace in the Digest commissioned by the Christian emperor Justinian. The evidence which remains, therefore, is scattered and often difficult to evaluate. What follows is an attempt to present clearly the primary evidence for the legal basis of the condemnation of Christians before 250 without the accretions of later hagiography or of modern interpretations.

I will begin this investigation by summarising Mommsen's views on the powers of governors, as I understand them. According to Mommsen, the task of the Republican governor was to administer civil justice and to maintain the obedience of subjects and slaves. He was as little a criminal judge as the Roman praetor, whose title he originally bore. His capacity to employ coercitio against non-citizens (and citizens also, until the appeal laws and the Sempronian law were issued) was derived from his military imperium and was quite distinct from criminal jurisdiction. Criminal justice was dispensed for aliens by the local communities and for Roman citizens in the provinces by the courts in Rome.

With the Empire came two innovations (Mommsen thought). First, local autonomy was restricted. Subject cities lost to the governor their prerogative of imposing serious penalties; even Roman municipia surrendered much of their criminal jurisdiction. Secondly, military imperium, already checked by Republican laws (above), was further limited by the Augustan law on public violence. This development, implying in itself that the governor had become a fully-fledged criminal judge, ensured that capital jurisdiction over citizens was concentrated, as before, in Rome.

Text I (Vergil). Found by Petrie at Hawara eighty years ago, P(apyrus) Hawara 24 is now in the collection at University College, London. It has writing on both sides. On one side is a line of Latin verse repeated over and over; on the other side is other Latin, also repeated over and over. The first editor, A. H. Sayce, whose publication was merely two lines in a check-list, recognized, however, that the line on one side is Vergil, Aeneid 2, 601:

Text I Non tibi Tyndaridis facies [invisa Lacaenae]

The last two words are torn away and are wholly missing, but all of the rest is plain. Certainly both sides were written for practice. Scholars commonly felt that exercises of this sort have little interest, and so the papyrus had received only a few mentions (bibliography with complete references infra).

Two prefects of Egypt, Aelius Gallus and C. Petronius, undertook expeditions outside their province under Augustus. Aelius Gallus led a campaign against Arabia Felix, and C. Petronius on two occasions fought the Ethiopians. Dio dates the Arabian expedition to 24 B.C., the Ethiopian campaigns to 22.

The sources suggest that both men waged their wars during their prefectures. The proximity of their periods of activity, which may well confuse their chronology, is vouched for by Augustus himself, who says that both the Arabian and the Ethiopian wars took place ‘eodem fere tempore’. Several scholars have, indeed, rejected the order of prefectures given by Dio; others have involved themselves in a series of constitutional difficulties, which demand attention if it is assumed that the campaigns in these two areas overlapped.

The task of this paper is, in part, an invidious one: for I shall have to begin by looking a gift-horse in the mouth. I shall have to question a group of opinions that link the rise of Christianity in Africa with a resurgence of the local culture of the area. This resurgence, it is said, explains not only the rapid collapse of Roman rule at the time of the Vandal invasion of 429, but the disappearance of Roman civilisation and of Christianity itself in Africa in the early Middle Ages.

Discussion of this suggestion, however, tends to be jeopardised from the start because claims for the honour of being the resurgent local culture of Late Roman Africa have been enthusiastically advanced on behalf of two distinct and mutually-exclusive local cultures, associated with the two native languages—with Punic, on the one hand, and with ‘Libyan’ (which is often described by a convenient if perilous anachronism as ‘Berber’), on the other. What is more, these claims have been advanced by two equally distinct groups of scholars, handling different evidence. The evidence for the survival of Punic—or, so as not to prejudge the issue, of a lingua Punica—is literary: Augustine of Hippo and Procopius are the sole authorities for the period. The evidence for ‘Berber,’ by contrast, is largely confined to the interpretation of Libyan inscriptions and of traces of unchanging habits of worship and craftsmanship allegedly betrayed in the remains of the Christian Churches of Central Numidia.

The reign of Gratian marked a turning-point in the conflict between Christianity and Paganism in the Roman Empire. One of the more spectacular manifestations of this change of emphasis which culminated in the anti-pagan legislation of Theodosius was Gratian's ostentatious repudiation of the title of pontifex maximus, held by every Emperor from Augustus down to Gratian's own father, Valentinian. The Christian Emperors had tolerated it hitherto as a purely formal element of their titulature. But Gratian refused the pontifical robe, ἀθέμιτον εἶναι Χριστιανῷ τὸ σχῆμα νομίσας.

Zosimus, our only authority for the event, dates it to the beginning of Gratian's reign. If he means 367, when Gratian was created co-Augustus by Valentinian, then he is certainly wrong, for pontifex maximus is attested among Gratian's titles in an inscription of the year 370 (CIL VI, 1175). And even if his accession proper in 375 is meant, when Valentinian died, this is still wrong, for Ausonius addressed him as pontifex in his Gratiarum Actio of January 379.

The surviving literary evidence for the lex Pompeia, provincial charter of the joint province of Bithynia-Pontus, is of prime importance for our knowledge of the nature and content of these charters, which established the fundamental organization of a Roman province. Of the charters of other provinces, only the lex Rupilia of Sicily is known in any comparable detail. Our knowledge of Pompey's law, a piece of work which stood the test of time and lasted, with some modification, until the day of Cassius Dio, also affords some reasonable basis for an assessment of his administrative achievement.

The discussion of Pompey's organization of this province has tended to concentrate attention on two traditional questions. Firstly, controversy about the extent of the territory added to Bithynia from the kingdom of Mithridates to form the new province has led to lengthy debate concerning the exact location of the eastern frontier. Secondly, much speculation has centred around the attempt to determine Pompey's ultimate purpose in organizing this area as he did and to accord him appropriate praise or condemnation.

Sound chronology is fundamental in any attempt to trace the development of the Roman imperial administration. This is especially true for those officials whose careers lay in the sub-equestrian ranks of the administration, as the funerary inscriptions, on which most of our detailed knowledge of them depends, are extremely difficult to date. For the Augusti liberti the main dating criterion is the imperial nomen gentilicium in their full nomenclature, which fixes their date of manumission, normally at the age of thirty or soon after, to the period in which the manumitting emperor or emperors reigned; the terminus ad quem for holding a post in the administration is, therefore, not more than forty years after the death of the last emperor bearing a given nomen, and normally a post is not likely to have been held later than about twenty-five years after the emperor's death. In the numerous cases, however, where the nomen of an Imperial freedman is not recorded, but only his cognomen and status-indication are given, the problem is much more difficult. External dating criteria are usually lacking; we are forced to make the best use possible of internal evidence.

Out of a grave containing a skeleton that was accidentally discovered in 1939 near the village of Stráže, in the vicinity of the world-famous spa of Pieštany in south-western Slovakia, archaeologists succeeded in recovering a large circular plate (33 cm. in diameter)—a lanx (Pl. III). It is decorated on its upper surface with a very interesting engraved design in the centre and a series of scenes in graded relief on its flat flange, along the outer edge of which is a row of minute half globules. No niello is employed, but the ornament is richly gilded with gold foil, which today shows cracks in many places and has in some places even fallen off.

In the central roundel (119 mm. in diameter; Pl. IV) there is a picture of an oath-taking over a sacrificial victim, similar to that on gold coins of the Roman Republic ascribed to the family of the Veturii. This scene is drawn by a skilled hand, in fine lines and with great feeling for its decorative potentialities. The interpretation of the coin-type (Pl. VI, 2) has already given rise to a number of different opinions which, however, agree on one point, namely that it was struck to commemorate some significant event in which a member of the house of Veturii had played the decisive role.

No subject in the history of the Roman Empire has more significance or more pitfalls than that of the local cultures of the provinces. The evidence is in each case, with the exception of Judaea and Egypt, relatively slight, disparate and ambiguous. But, on the one hand, the subject has very real attractions, which may lead to the building of vast but fragile historical theories, attempting to bring the distinctive culture of an area into a schematic relationship with events such as political movements or the spread of Christianity. On the other, we can never escape the possibility that the denial of the survival of a significant local culture may be falsified by new evidence; even worse, a local culture may have existed in a form which left no written records or datable artefacts.

Yet the problem must be faced, not only for the intrinsic interest which such cultures present, but for the light the enquiry sheds on Graeco-Roman civilization itself. We might conclude for one area that Graeco-Roman culture remained the merest façade, for another that it completely obliterated a native culture. More commonly, we will find a mixture or co-existence of cultures. In such a situation, again, the local element might have been culturally and socially insignificant, or, as it was in Egypt and in Judaea, embodied in a coherent traditional civilization with its own language, literature, customs, religion and (in Egypt) art-forms.

Alluding to the scanty sources for the reign of Trajan, the historian Gibbon came out with a melancholy pronouncement: ‘the glimmerings of an abridgement or the doubtful light of a panegyric’. Gibbon's mind was on warfare and government. A later age is drawn to a wider and more subtle theme: the study of society. A document of unique value exists, the correspondence of Pliny. It illuminates class and rank and behaviour—and a whole region of Northern Italy. For other lands of the Roman West the evidence is poor and scattered. The written record has little more to disclose than the families of Seneca and Julius Agricola or the pedigree of the Antonine emperors. One has recourse to inscriptions and the study of nomenclature.

Pliny reveals persons of all orders, from consular magnates to small men and local friends. He also covers a wide range in time, from several long-lived survivors who had come to manhood under Claudius and Nero to youths of predictable promise whose consulates would adorn the first years of Trajan's successor. Further, the interrelation with other types of evidence is highly instructive. The information is abundant enough to permit some negative inferences. It is worth giving a thought to categories and groups that are absent from the correspondence or sparsely on show. Other ‘circles’ may therefore be surmised in the life of the capital. The categories are both social and regional. Certain cities of the North happen to make no contribution.

Cumae was the first city founded by Greek colonists on the mainland of Italy. It attained pre-eminence for a time in the Bay of Naples and its influence was exercised over a wide area for more than 500 years. Yet the detailed phases of its long history are still very nebulous and patchy. References in ancient writers deal mainly with its contacts with the rising power of Rome. Little excavation has been carried out on the site (apart from the cemeteries) and the published information is mostly of a general nature, more suited to tourist appreciation than to that of serious students. Serious students do not lack interest in the problems presented by Cumae, but they may perhaps lack familiarity with its topography. Whatever its faults of scholarship may be, this present study is at least the product of eight years' residence and assiduous delving into the archaeology of the Cuma/Bacoli Peninsula.

The story of Cumae is naturally divisible into two stages; the Greek and the Roman. Most accounts begin with a discussion about the date of its foundation, and where the colonists came from. But it is not the date that interests us here in this enquiry; it is the reason why exploring sailormen not only visited here but chose Cumae as their trading station, when there were apparently more attractive sites at Misenum and other places round the Bay of Naples; to say nothing of all the sites they will presumably have passed by on their voyage from Greece.

Eleven fragments of the monumental inscription here discussed were found at Saepinum during excavations carried out over many years by the Soprintendente alle Antichità degli Abruzzi, Professor Valerio Cianfarani. My best thanks are due to Professor Cianfarani for his exceptional generosity in making the epigraphic material in his care available to Dr. A. La Regina and myself for our work on the Supplementum of CIL IX. The inscription, carved on slabs of Luni marble, in all probability belonged to a building in the forum, perhaps the Basilica. The fragments were obviously re-used at a later stage as paving slabs: they may be arranged to form four unconnected portions (Fragments A–D) of a senatorial cursus of Imperial date relating to one M. Hirrius Fronto Neratius Pansa, known to us hitherto only from fragmentary and uncertain references. Previously, in fact, we only knew of him as consular legate of Cappadocia and Galatia between 77/78 and 79/80; what appear to be indirect references to his consulship are also found in an inscription from Lugdunensis and in a graffito from Pompeii.